This site went live today after 2 - 3 months of work in the background gathering initial information about brass bands in Ireland. It all started when Jimmy Kitchen (Junior) handed me some hand-written contest records at the Brass Band League Solos and Ensembles contest on 14 February 2015. That led to a lot of late-night research on the internet and in newspaper archives and a realisation that not enough is known and documented about brass banding in Ireland, North and South, and that we really need to gather everything together in one location.

There's a huge amount of work to do, not least in getting a full picture of the extent of banding in Ireland from the 19th Century onwards (though I'm aware of some 'brass bands' being in existence before then), and to understand why they came into existence and what happened to them subsequently. I've already begun to uncover some fascinating stories about bands and various incidents which will be shared here and elsewhere in the coming months.